The Apprentice:Donald Trump 5, Episode 10

Do my eyes deceive me? Was The Apprentice actually..*gasp* halfway interesting?!? As the episode opened, Synergy returned from the board room, and the firing of Andrea. Allie decided she needed to confront Sean about his siding with Andrea in the meeting. After a lot of screaming, Roxanne ended up crying about the team unity being shattered. You know what? Sean sided with Andrea, get over it, move along!

This weeks task involved the teams each throwing a grand opening event for two new Hair Cuttery locations. Let me just say how much I despise the name of this company. That’s like calling a video renteal store “Video Rental Store”. Did this company wait until the day before they opened to name their company? Yeesh. Anyway, the team to make the most money would win. I actually kind of liked this task because it was about actual business tatics and entrapunership. You could actually learn something from this one besides “Wow, we should have hired a specialist to do this!” Tammy stepped up to lead Synergy and Charmaine for Gold Rush.

Synergy got to work quickly and got their fliers printed up quickly and got out on the streets to start handing them out. Allie and Roxanne took a break for dinner and discussed how they felt Sean had sold his soul by siding with Andrea and that Tammy would want nothing to do with him. Flash over to Sean and Tammy hugging and squeezing their way through the night. When they stopped for dinner they were cozy and ate from each others plates. Yep, she wants nothing to do with him. Uh-huh.

Over at Gold Rush, Charmaine was obsessed with getting all of the products set-up just right on the shelves before anything else could be done. After Lee had spent most of the night setting up his area, she told him he had done it wrong and wanted it done again. Lee’s concern was they should already be out promoting and doing the shelving later, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen at this point.

At the grand openings, they couldn’t have been run more differently. Charmaine sent out Lee and Tarek to put fliers on windshields (something I can personally say does you no good) and they both mocked her as they travelled around. Back at the Gold Rush store, there were hardly any customers, employees milling around and Charmaine getting her hair done. Yes…getting her hair done…during the working hours…I was amazed as anyone. While Synergy was hopping and worked hard at upselling their products to those getting haircuts.

In the end, Synergy earned $1,005.47 and Gold Rush only earned $700. I actually expected a larger difference from how busy the stores were, but it was still a good example of the different styles. Synergy’s reward was to spend an afternoon with Burt Bacharach writing a song. They couldn’t even agree on lyrics. I think Synergy’s days are quickly dwindling.

In the board room, Charmaine was raked over the coals. She claimed there loss was due to a lack of product sales, and not because of her poor leadership. Trump asked why she spent part of the day getting her hair cut and she said it was because she felt she needed the Hair Cuttery experience to better sell it. Let’s all soak that one in shall we? If you had a month to do the task, sure, great idea. One day? You are a moron. The lone, calm voice in this whole thing was Michael, who impressed Trump with his words of why Tarek was hard to lead and should be fired. It was all downhill after that as Tarek and Charmaine went in to all-out attack mode on each other.

When Trump had his fill of the ickering he fired Charmaine, but quickly told everyone to remain sitting and he fired Tarek for being impossible to lead. After everyone was gone, Trump said he figured they would still be bickering in the cab. They weren’t, it was silent as death.